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Hey Everyone

Can anyone recommend a good Starship combat game? The pen and paper and dice kind please.

Why not make one. I've always wanted to make one.

I took a big poster board and drew a grid on it. Maybe that's too hardcore... if it's going to be portable maybe just a grid on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Maybe laminate the paper or glue it on a bristol board. Then some way to record starship statistics... a character sheet. Then different classes of ship, with separate hit points for each section of the ship, or if looking for simplicity maybe just one hit point counter for the entire ship.

D20 future is free from wizards.com, it has pre-made starship rules, but I think a self-designed system would be superior.

Brian

Solauren wrote:Hey Everyone

Can anyone recommend a good Starship combat game? The pen and paper and dice kind please.

Star Fleet Battles is an old Star Trek tabletop game which has been around for quite some time. Haven't played it myself, although I've heard good things about it.

Uraniun235 wrote:

Solauren wrote:Hey Everyone

Can anyone recommend a good Starship combat game? The pen and paper and dice kind please.

Star Fleet Battles is an old Star Trek tabletop game which has been around for quite some time. Haven't played it myself, although I've heard good things about it.

The game in one word: DETAILS. The "basic" rulebook is a few hundred pages, and there are hundred page expansion books covering every possible detail of everything from fighters to scheduling crew bathroom breaks. Supposedly it's a fun game, but the learning curve is a vertical cliff because of all the rules you have to know.

I bought a copy of the game out of curiousity about the roots of the Starfleet Command PC games (which I like a lot), but I've never found anyone willing to learn it and play.

I'd recommend Dreampod 9's silhouette system.

With just the core rules you get all the stuff you need to build your own stuff. It has got a fair range of detail also. It uses a hex board if you like, and has rules for 3D vectors. Thrust is measured in G's, rules for tracking reaction mass etc. Point defense systems and other coolness too. There's perhaps more errata than other games, but it's because they do care about the game.

Though unless your buying one of the world books , it's just rules you get, and like one example for the vehicle construction rules. So you'll need your own background etc depending on what your after. There'd be a lot of work in making up all the vehicles using the rules. The only existing world of theirs that really suitable for space combat is Jovian Chronicles, and thats Gundam style.

Check it out at least.

brianeyci wrote:D20 future is free from wizards.com, it has pre-made starship rules, but I think a self-designed system would be superior.

If it's anything like the Star Wars d20 rules, you're right about self-designed being superior. It's decent enough for its purpose as an RPG system (where space combat is just one element of many in an adventure), but as a wargame it's horrible. The rules are simple and a bit lacking in detail, and more importantly, it's extremely biased towards hero player characters and their small ships. In the Star Wars version, four x-wings are more than a match for a star destroyer, for example.

The amount of balance and rules changes needed to make it a good combat system would be so significant that you're just better off making your own. I've tried revising it myself, and there's a ton of work that needs to be done to fix it.

If you can find it I'd reccomend Full Thrust.

Simple design, good depth, and pretty much infinitely customiseable.

Plus as a big bonus you can enforce newtonian physics if you want to.

It's expensive as hell (but the rules are free), but Battle Fleet Gothic is fun.

You can get the rules here: Linkage

Imperial Overlord wrote:It's expensive as hell (but the rules are free), but Battle Fleet Gothic is fun.

You can get the rules here: Linkage

Sites down.

Working fine for me.

Go to the main page of the website, then choose your country, then go into it

Imperial Overlord wrote:It's expensive as hell (but the rules are free), but Battle Fleet Gothic is fun.

You can get the rules here: Linkage

Alternatively, one could substitute in stuff like Legos or those little Micro Machines toys.

Or if you have a printer and lable paper make countrs o put on crdstock and cut them up.

I also recommend BFG
it is the awesome.

Or you could try Full Thrust

If you can find a copy "Renegade Legion: Leviathan."